SUMMER of FEAR (9 page)

"Sorry about last night," I said.

"You'll get yours." He gave me that look again, as if he'd
found out something that put me, himself—everything—in a cold new light.

"Ready when you are," I said.

"I'll wait till you're not."

"How bad is this?"

"Worst I've ever seen. Two children."

"So Winters is ready to go public."

"Should have after the Ellisons. What'd you give him for this,
another Dina story?"

"That's right."

Marty's eyes bored into me. "Nothing's right,
Monroe."

He stopped at the first room on our left. I could see past his shoulder
through the open door to a pale blue wall dripped with dark red.

"Meet the Wynn twins," said Martin, and
stood aside.

I went in. My first thought was that an industrial accident had happened
here, something involving faulty machinery and human flesh. You could smell the
foul scent of innards exposed to air for the first and last time. The blood
seemed to have been thrown at one wall—large impact splatters that ran like
paint all the way down to the blue carpet. On the opposite wall were great wide
smears of it, thick in places, then thinning as a brush might make. But the
brush was a small boy—a few years old.

I guessed—who lay doll-like beside the
wall where phrases he been crudely written with his blood:

I took a deep
breath and squatted down, looking at a cardboard mobile that had once probably
hung over a crib. Little military airplanes lay flat on the floor at my feet—a
P-51, an F-l
11, an
AWACS jet. I took
another deep breath, then looked to the far side of the room, where the crib
was tucked into a corner, near a reading nook that extended out toward a
garden. The alcove had windows on three sides. There was a hook in the ceiling
of it, for the potted fern and macrame hanger that were dumped on the carpet
below. From the hook dangled another boy, ankle bound, the binding set on the
ceiling hook, his small arms out in front of him. He looked like a tiny diver
descending toward a pool. There was, in fact, a pool beneath him. He turned
very slightly on the hook; turned back.

I looked down at the cardboard airplanes again and apologized silently
to these boys whom I hadn't come here in time to help.

I sensed Marty behind and above me.

"Justin and Jacob," he said. "We're not sure who’s who
yet."

I took another deep breath. My legs had stopped feeling and my pulse was
light and fast. I felt Marty's hand lock onto my arm and yank up.

"There's more," he said.

One foot in front of the other, that choking, meaty, slaughterhouse
stink all around me, I followed Marty from the room.

We stood in the hallway, our backs against the wall, and smoked. The
ceiling seemed terribly low. It was dark, too, even with the recessed flood
lamps bearing down from above. A uniform jangled by, his face averted, crossed
himself, and headed into the twins' room.

"You make enough money to get out of this business, then come back
for this kind of shit," Marty said. "Does it really pay that
well?"

"Go to hell, Martin."

"Wish I could."

"Damm...
damn."

"He does, He does. Mom and Dad are in the master. There's a daughter,
too, but she must have been gone. Her bed's made up and she isn't anywhere
around."

I went in. It looked as if something had fed there perhaps—captured
prey, torn it apart, partaken. Or maybe not eaten at all, but simply shredded
the room and the people in it, searching for something very small, very hidden,
very important. The smell was strong. Both bodies—smallish dark-skinned
bodies—were opened and emptied like drawers. Their contents were everywhere,
strewn around the floor, hurled against walls, piled on the bed, strung from
the blades of the ceiling fan, flung onto the lamp shades, the blinds, the
television screen, the dresser, hung from the top fronds of a palm that stood
by a window, splattered against that same window and drying now from red to
black in the golden summer sunlight of morning. The carcass of Mr. Wynn, on his
back, arms out, was spread across the bed. Mrs. Wynn was hanging in the shower
stall, tied by her hair to the nozzle fixture. Some of what had been inside her
was spilled out in a pile over the drain, which had backed up, making a pool of
blood.

The two Crime Scene men were going to work with a video camera and
evidence bags when I left and found Martin, still in the hallway.

I heard a muted commotion from the living room, followed by Sheriff
Daniel Winters and his entourage coming briskly toward us up the hallway. Their
footsteps had a ring of assurance. Winters is a tall, very thin man,
bespectacled, a sharp dresser. Gray colors his hair at the temples, and his
eyes, behind the glasses, are black, hyper-vigilant, and consuming. He often
stoops, catches himself at it, straightens himself, then slumps back into his
characteristic posture again. There were three men besides Dan—two assistant
DAs I knew, a uniform I'd never seen—and a pretty red-haired woman named Karen
Schulz,. the Sheriff's Department Community Relations director. Winters nodded
at me on his way past, then took Martin by the arm without a word
and led him into the master suite. The prosecutors and deputy followed. I heard
Winters's shocked expletive, then heard it again, filled with outrage,
disbelief, dread.

Karen Schultz studied me with her always-alert green eyes. "We're
going to have to hold back a lot of this, Russell

"You just say what."

"I need to see your copy before you file."

"You can see it, but I won't change it. Tell me what to sit on, and
I'll sit on it."

"We'll admit the possibility of a link to Ellison ;
Fernandez."

"That's why I'm here."

"But nothing positive until the ME's done and all the labs are
complete. You will use the words
possibly linked
and say we are
attempting to establish a definite connection. You not encouraged to use the
term
serial killer."

"Repeat offender sounds a little trivial."

She sighed, glanced toward the door of the master suite, then looked
back at me. Karen Schultz's hair was straight and luxurious, her skin pale, her
nose freckled. She never smiled. "Go ahead with it for the
Journal
if you want, but if we can't connect the scenes, you're the one who'll be
wearing the ass ears."

"What time is the press conference?"

"Four tomorrow. That vets out to a two-day scoop on all the other
print. Spin Dina well."

"I will. Thanks."

She looked again at the door to the master. "Gad, I hate
this," she said.

All I could think
of to say back was, "I'm sorry."

I loitered,
taking notes, getting the basics, sneaking off to a little laundry room with a
door that opened to the backyard, so I could smoke, breath fresh air, and have
a drink from my flask.

The detectives quickly determined that Mr. Tran Wynn had been forty-one
years old, a physician. Maia was thirty-six and had worked for a local
aerospace firm.

The twins—-Jacob and Justin—were two.

The daughter, Kim, was blessedly gone. Where? I looked into her room.
The bed was made, and the cops had found the door open, whereas the doors to
the twins' room and the master suite were both closed. Karen Schultz demanded
another search of the house for Kim, which proved fruitless. Winters ordered a
door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood for the girl, after Martin and DA
assistants all impressed on him that for the killer to take the girl alive
would be "out of profile." APB pending. Bloodhounds considered.

"No story until we find the girl," said Karen. Her face was so
pale, her freckles showed even darker.

They didn't want Kim reading about the death of her
entire family—her entire universe—in the evening
Journal.
I didn’t either. "Don't worry," I said.
"The Wynns are Vietnamese, aren’t they?"

Karen nodded. "The last name is an anglicized version of
Nguyen—pronunciation is similar. Jacob, Justin, and Kim? I say Tran and Maia
were trying hard to fit in as Americans."

"A lot of Catholics came down from the
North," I said

"I
guess the Wynns should have stayed put. Least they could have been buried in
their own ground."

Half an hour later, Martin found me in the laundry nook and waved me
back to the living room. I'd already filled ten pages in my notebook.
"You'll like this," he said. Winters, the two assistant DAs, both CS
men, and Karen all stood in a loose semicircle facing the Wynn's impressive
stereo system. One of the uniforms hit a button and the loud hiss of a tape can
through the speakers. It continued for ten seconds or so, and realized it
wasn't all hiss—it was also the sound of ocean water on sand, or maybe cars on
a highway, or both.

The voice that
came on next was a man's—slow, deliberate, almost pleasant. The words were
spaced out and careful enunciated, as if for a student to hear and repeat:

"
Coming... Seeing... Having... Willing
Cleaning... Taking.. .Jah..."

Then more waves,
tiny voices in the far background, and a long inhalation, followed by silence.
What came next was the same ocean-heavy background, the same voice, but now it
was slurred, badly garbled, as if the man was in a drug stupor or falling off to
sleep:

"Ice-a h-h-homing gen spoon.
O-o-ouch treble t-t-tings. A-a-ax is cute me. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. G-gren
duffel m-m-m'back. M-m-make m-m-m'do tings. C-c-cun seed brat cun wormin from
he..."

Then the end of
sound, just the near silence of the Wynn's speakers.

We listened to it again, then a third time.

"Green duffel," said Assistant DA Peter
Haight.

"Green duffel on my back," said Winters.

"Green
devil
on my back," said Marty. "Makes me do
things."

"Execute me," I said.

Parish stared at me.

"That's what I heard, too," said Karen.

The most pressured of silences came over us. Winters looked around,
studying each face in the group. Heads shook. Karen asked to hear it again. We
listened.

Suddenly, a cold wave of astonishment rose up and broke over me.

Something was very wrong here.

This I could not believe.

Not only what we were hearing but the fact that the dicks had found it
so quickly. A houseful of death and blood, latents, footprints probably, hair
and fiber almost assuredly, and
these guys turn on the goddamned stereo
?
Winters must have read the amazed doubt on my face. He looked at the two
assistant DAs and the two CS investigators and told them to beat it.

Then it hit me. Of course.

"Nothing about the recordings," said
Winters.

"Nothing about the writing on the walls,"
said Schultz.

"And nothing about you guys finding the same
things at the Ellison and Fernandez places," I said. "What have you
done?"

"We'll expect you to omit that question in the
Journal.”
said Karen. "Or we'll omit
you
from everything that happen: this county from now until the day you die."

“Why?"

Winters locked eyes with me. "We made a judgment call and it turned
out to be the wrong one. It was a mistake, hoped we could get him before he did
this again. It's that simple Russell. We're giving you this story. Don't burn
us. Help us.
don't forget that splashing blood all over page one never saved
anybody's life. Not in my opinion, anyway."span>

In the ensuing silence, Parish glared at me; Karen Schultz looked at the
floor and bit her lip;, Winters sighed and stared stubbornly ahead through
space.

I was almost too stunned to think. The only thing I could come up with
was to pursue my temporary advantage through this silence.

"Let me hear the other tapes," I said. "Let me see the
photos of the walls."

"No deal," said Karen. "Never."

"Fine," said Winters. "Okay."

"Monroe is a
reporter,
sir," said
Karen.

"That's why he'll sell us his conscience for a story," said
Winters, a true master of the art of accommodation. "Right, Russ?"

No
reporter on earth would have said anything but yes. If I didn't, I could burn
them big-time—once. But the same pages on which I flushed away my access to the
Sheriff's Department and prosecutors for the rest of my life would be used two
days later to soak up pee in a thousand litter boxes throughout I county. And
I'd be out in the cold. And whatever damage Winters's silence had done was
certainly, clearly, done forever. I was a little surprised at how Winters had
changed since I'd worked for him. He was a harried political animal now,
thinking ahead, watching out for himself, but not taking care of business. He'd
made a terrible call, a call he wouldn't have made five years ago, and he knew
it. He also knew he could hide it. Karen and I would do it for him.